There isn't a one size fids all this is the best way to sell.
It's going to depend on your offer. It's going to depend on your business.
It's going to depend on you. It's going to depend on your ideal
client. And anyone who's telling you one size of fids all this is the
best way to do it, they've got a bit of a vested interest.
They're probably trying to sell you something. Welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm Steph
Taylor. For years, I read all the books, downloaded all the freebies,
and did all the courses, But it wasn't until I started taking imperfect
action that my business had its first million dollar year. Imperfect action is about
doing things before you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over perfect action, and moving
forward even when you're not sure you're doing it right. On this show,
you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips and strategies to build a business
that brings you more profit, more freedom, and even more joy. Are
you on the list to get my daily Businesses? Every day, I'll send
you a bite sized prompt designed to help you grow your business in a more
intentional way. Sign up at Steph Taylor dot Co, forward slash DBB or
at the link in the show notes. Hey, welcome back to In Perfect
Action. This is episode seven hundred and eighty one. Today I am sharing
some of the common mistakes that limit your sales in your business. Now.
I've noticed recently there's a bit of a general sentiment in the online business space
that isn't very positive, especially with Australian businesses who I've heard a lot of
comments from people saying, you know, this year has been really slow.
There haven't been a whole lot of sales so far this year compared with previous
years. And sure, some of this could be a bit of a reflection
of what's going on in the economy, which is normal. By the way,
it's normal for the economy to ebb and flow. It always has.
It's just that we've been in a very extended positive upswing kind of period for
a while. But also the reason your sales might be down could be due
to other factors as well. And here's the thing. How your business shows
up and how you show up as the face of your business that's going to
have an impact on the sales that you make. I've noticed a huge trend
and that is that most online business owners don't show up and sell enough.
And I'm going to talk about that in a minute as well, but I
mean the process of creating and launching a brand new membership to help overcome this
common problem. It's been something I've been thinking about for a long time.
I've been sitting on the idea for a long time, and you know,
it feels like the right it feels like the right timing for this new idea
to be berthed into the world. So keep an eye out for that in
the next couple of weeks. But for now, let's jump into the nine
mistakes that you could be making that are holding you back from making sales in
your business. And chances are you are making at least one or more of
these mistakes that I'm sharing in today's episode. So mistake number one I already
hinted towards this one. Mistake Number one is you are not showing up and
selling to your audience enough. If you are hoping that somebody is going to
land on your website, they're going to find a link to your offer,
then they're going to buy it, You're really limiting your sales and instead you
need to actually show up. Now, that doesn't mean you have to be
posting Instagram stories every five minutes. It can be on a social media platform,
yes, it can be to your email list, it can be wherever
feels good to you and wherever your audience is. It doesn't have to be
all of the different places. I would prefer it's not all of the different
places, because then you're really scattering your energy. But if you choose you
know one or two places where you can consistently show up and where your audience
is and then sell to them. And yeah, I know if selling feels
really uncomfortable, right and you're worried, well, but what if selling to
them turns them off and they follow me or they unsubscribe. So firstly,
you are selling the solution to a problem that they have, and they can't
know about the solution unless you tell them. So by selling to them,
you're actually telling them. You're showing them the solution to the problem that they're
experiencing, which is ultimately going to improve their lives in some way. And
secondly, if somebody unsubscribes or unfollows, they were probably never going to buy
from you in the first place. Now I will be the first one to
tell you that sharing free content is a great way to deliver value to your
audience. I do this three times a week on this podcast. I'm constantly
sending emails to my list. You know. I even have the Daily biz
Boosters, which are emails going out every day for free with tips and tricks
for running an online business. But at the same time, you also need
to make money otherwise you don't have a business. If you can't stay in
business, then you can't keep creating that free content. So you need to
sell to your audience as well as, yes, give them value, but
you do need to sell. Mistake number two you are not testing enough different
offers, offer ideas and different ways of selling your offers, and I'll talk
about these a little bit in some of the future mistakes I'm covering in this
episode. But this might look like new ways of packaging up your existing offers.
So let's say you've got a signature course that you've sold a few times,
you've launched it a few times. Maybe you'll test running it with new
bonuses, or maybe you'll test new ways of delivering your existing offers. So
if you have a really great one on one coaching program, maybe you'll test
running that in a group format. Or maybe if you've been working with one
on one clients for a while and you're getting a little bit tired or your
calendar's filling up, maybe you'll move to coaching via Voxa or WhatsApp. You
know, you're looking at what can I what's already working, and how can
I try something different with it? Or it might look like, oh,
let me create something new. What would what would happen if if I put
together a two hour live workshop on this particular, really small, specific topic
and sold it to my email list? Right, it's all about testing new
things, new ways to deliver your offers, new ways to help your ideal
clients. Mistake number three. You're not being creative with what you sell.
So you're looking at what others in your industry or what other similar businesses are
selling, and you're looking at how you can copy and paste that into your
business. So, for example, if other people in your industry are delivering
vip days, you're like, oh, I need to do a VIP day
offer. I need to add a VIP day offer. That must be what's
going to work for me, Or oh everyone else is doing six week coaching
programs, so mine needs to be six weeks as well, without actually asking,
oh, is that what I want to do? Is that the best
way to serve my audience is that the most creative way that I can do
this? Does it excite me? So? Instead, how can you potentially
be a little creative with it, potentially do it a little bit differently to
everybody else in your industry? And how can you do this in a way
that lights you up, in a way that you are excited to deliver,
not in a way that just feels like a box ticking. Yes, I'm
delivering a VIP day because everyone else is, so that must be what I
have to do. Okay, number four. Mistake number four, You are
not being creative with how you sell. So you can keep selling the way
that you have always done, and maybe that is via one on one discovery
calls, or maybe you sell your course off the back of a free webinar,
or maybe you're sending emails to your list and that's where most of your
sales happen, or you're selling on social media wherever it is. But the
problem is that you're relying on what has always worked and you're not trying new
things, and this can get a little bit boring. Absolutely, and some
methods of selling you might notice, actually stop working over time because your market
changes. The things that people need to help them make a decision about whether
or not your offer is the right place to invest their money in their time
right now, those things might change. They might need a little bit more
handholding to make that decision, in which case they aren't buying off the back
of a webinar anymore, and maybe they need a one on one discovery call
or vice versa. I don't know. These are all things to test.
You can only know these things when you test them, because there isn't a
one size fits all this is the best way to sell. It's going to
depend on your offer. It's going to depend on your business. It's going
to depend on you. It's going to depend on your ideal client. And
anyone who's telling you one size fids all this is the best way to do
it, they've got a bit of a vested interest. They're probably trying to
sell you something now. For example, if you've never sold your offer,
if you've never sold your course. Let's say you've got a course, if
you've never sold it, Viral webinar. Maybe you could test selling it viral
webinar once, even if delivery your webinar feels scary. Because I can tell
you, as somebody who has now done many, many, many webinars,
the first ten of them were terrifying. Now I love them, but I
had to really push myself to do them. And now that I've done them,
they're a lot easier, they're a lot more fun. But just because
you're afraid of doing a webinar doesn't mean that it's not the right approach,
doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. Maybe another thing you could test,
for example, is new bonuses. So let's say you've got a great course
and you want to see if selling it or doing a little three day mini
launch just to your email list with some new bonuses, maybe that would help
get some people who are on the fence off the fence. This is all
about testing those new things, having fun with it, not being like,
oh, this has to work, and if it doesn't work, it was
all a failure. This is about let's see what works. Let's see if
this is going to work, Let's see what happens. Let's have a little
bit of fun, you know, business can be fun as well. It
doesn't have to all be make or break serious, all right. Mistaken number
five, You are limiting how you help your audience. If you only have
one signature offer and that is the only way that they can work with you,
then your audience can only buy from you once. And you know the
old saying. I don't know if it's still relevant. It's probably actually more
now. But the old saying in the marketing world was it costs seven times
more to sell to a new customer than to an existing one. And I
would probably say that given the current online world, how saturated it is,
how expensive it is to get in front of people's eyeballs, how harder it
is to reach new people, I would actually say it's probably more than seven
times more expensive. Now. Okay, So if you can help that same
ideal client to solve a few different problems, you know, a few problems
that they're experiencing, or help them to achieve a few outcomes that they want,
then they're much more likely to come back to you again and again and
again, and you get to help them on a deeper level. You get
to have a bigger impact in their lives. Rather than helping a lot of
people in a really shallow or smaller way. Okay, number six. Mistake
Number six, your focus is on reaching new people rather than thinking of new
ways to serve your existing audience. Now, it's probably not news to you
that standing out online reaching people these days it's a little bit harder than it
was a few years ago. Right, But for some reason, how can
I reach more people? Seems to be the question that everyone keeps on asking.
And instead of just trying to reach more people all the time, how
can you better serve the ones that you already have in your audience, even
if your audience is tiny, right, how can you help those people in
a different way. You don't need to have a massive audience to build a
super profitable business. You just need to serve a few people really well,
over and over again. Okay, Number seven, The seventh mistake that is
limiting your sales. You think selling and marketing are the same thing. I
see this happening A lot people lump together selling and marketing and they call it
promoting. Here's how I see it. Marketing is the visibility activities that grow
your audience and the free content that builds trust with your audience. Sales is
that journey of how you convert your audience into buyers. Selling usually requires a
sales process, the journey that you are taking somebody on where they are making
a decision about whether or not to invest in one particular offer, and you
are giving them all of the things that they need to make that decision.
Your sales process might be one on one discovery calls, it might include a
webinar, it might include a card open sequence. It might be I don't
know, an in person coffee chat. That is all part of the sales
process. People need that element of decision making where you're giving them the information
that they need to help them make that decision. Whereas marketing is getting in
front of new people, sales is selling to the people you are already in
front of. People aren't going to just see a post about your course on
Instagram and be like, oh, I need that. They're not just going
to scroll through their Facebook feed and see an ad and be like oh great.
Right. Most of the time they need a little bit more than that
to make that decision. Even if they're super warm, they need a little
bit more than just these are the features and the benefits, and it has
eight modules. And this is a testimonial from someone that's no, that's just
barely scraping the surface. That's not enough for them to buy. Okay.
Mistake number eight. You only have one or two income streams in your business.
This is really risky. Relying on a limited number of income streams is
very risky because, for example, if all of your income is from a
one on one service or one on one coaching something like that, what happens
then if you have to take a month off, are there other income streams
that you can now add to your business to diversify it, to remove a
little bit of that risk, so that if you have a month off,
your income doesn't go to zero. So you can't just rely on that one
or two income streams. It can be really it can. I mean it
can really put your business at risk. And if you can get a little
bit creative with income streams, you know, it doesn't have to be oh
i've got one on one, so I need to add a course. You
can be a bit more creative. Maybe you can test some new offers as
a one off offer. Let me see what happens if I teach this live
workshop once. Let me see what happens if I run this four week group
program just once and you might love it and people might buy it, and
then you're like, great, I'm gonna do it again. It's going to
become one of my permanent offers. Or maybe you decide never ever to run
it again. Maybe another income stream might be affiliate income or referral income,
or maybe if you're already speaking at events, maybe you'll start charging people to
speak on stage. These can all be different income streams, all right.
Mistake number nine. You are not thinking about what your ideal client needs from
you right now. And the key part of this sentence is right now what
they need is going to always be changing because the environmental external factors they are
always changing, Their life lives are always changing, so what your ideal client
needs is always going to be changing. For example, if we think back
a few years to when the pandemic first hit and everyone was going into lockdown,
some business owners suddenly needed to learn how to take their businesses online,
and that was a great new opportunity for the people who had that skill set
to show those business owners, hey, this is how you set up an
online business. And I think about my ideal client, the classic online business
owner. At that time, they wanted so many more virtual events for connection.
They wanted that support. Now everyone's a little bit over all of the
online events attendance rates are way down because what they need is different to what
they needed a few years ago. The world that your business operates within is
constantly changing, and sometimes you need to look around and you need to ask,
what else does my ideal client need from me? How else can I
support them right now? And that might be making changes to your existing offers,
It might be testing new offers, It might be testing new ways of
selling your offers. There are so many different things that you can do if
you stop just looking at it as this box of Oh, it has to
be this. This is how I have to sell my offers because everyone else
is, well, this is how this is what I need to be selling,
because that's what everyone else is selling. If you allow yourself to accept
that there are no rules about what you must sell and how you must sell,
and instead it's about being creative with it and having a bit of fun
with it, then the ideas will start to flow in. Then you can
start to have an even bigger impact as a business, and you can start
to make more sales as well. So there you have it. Nine common
mistakes that limit your sales in your business, and I'm aiming with my new
membership, it's going to help you to overcome most, if not all,
of these mistakes. I'm really excited to bring it to you. I can't
tell you too much more about it just yet, but I'll be landing in
your inboxes with a little bit more about it in the coming weeks, so
please stay tuned for that. And if you're enjoy the show, please take
thirty seconds to leave a quick rating and a review. I read all of
them. A lot of work goes into producing this show, so it means
a lot to me when you do take time to leave that review. Thank
you so much for listening. Catch you next time.